


On the Train Ride Home

by Saturniidae



Category: D.N. Angel
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Blink And You Miss It Slash, Character Study, Gen, Subtext! Subtext Everywhere!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23439271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saturniidae/pseuds/Saturniidae
Summary: A school project leads to a conversation, which leads to a theft.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	On the Train Ride Home

**Author's Note:**

> Quick little one-off study of one of my oldest and most favorite of boys. While it's got the underpinnings of a ship-fic, I didn't think it warranted the tag? LMK if I should change it.  
> Title/quote from The Paper Kites' song of the same name.

`Still I was praying on the train ride home`   
`If I can't get the things I want`   
`Just give me what I need`

“I’m sure it’ll be _fine_ ,” Daisuke says, scratching the back of his neck as they leave the school’s campus.

Satoshi watches as Daisuke looks up, bites his lip, then grimaces.

“Yeah, it’ll be okay!”

“You didn’t tell your mother you invited me over, did you?” Satoshi drawls, shifting his bag higher onto his shoulder. The way Daisuke flushes would almost be amusing if it hadn’t been so predictable.

“Uh, no… But, it’s not as if you haven’t been to the house before,” Daisuke mumbles. He fishes his phone from his pocket and taps a quick message out, snapping it closed with one hand as he grins at Satoshi. “It’s fine!”

Satoshi tactfully decides not to mention the way Daisuke’s phone immediately lights up and starts to buzz, or the hasty way the other boy shoves it into his pocket. He’s made it a habit to watch and remember all of Daisuke’s nervous ticks, and right now, every single one is on display.

“We’ll take the train!” Daisuke declares, reaching out to nudge Satoshi in the opposite direction.

Satoshi cocks his head. “You normally walk.”

“Yeah, but… aren’t you tired?”

They walk in silence for a moment, Satoshi mentally cataloguing each step, each tired drag of his body. He is, but…

“Why?”

He watches as Daisuke flinches, eyebrow raised. He won’t concede to his failing body, he won’t acknowledge what it costs him to chase after Dark, over and over, or what curls, dark and venomous in his chest as they walk, side by side.

“It’s just that…”

He prepares the protest in his mouth, a negation pressing against his teeth, unable to withstand the worried concern about to be unleashed. He doesn’t have long to be an equal, to walk this path, and refuses to give it up.

“ _I’m_ tired, you know? Last night was brutal—did you _have_ to chase us two towns over?” Daisuke complains, nose wrinkling as he frowns. “After that, we deserve a bit of a break, don’t you think?”

“Apologies,” Satoshi says dryly. “I wasn’t aware my job gave you so much hardship.”

Daisuke snorts, his eyes darting to the side in that quick, furtive way of his that means Dark is saying something particularly rude and loud. Teasing them both shouldn’t be so easy or feel as good natured as it does, but it’s become so second nature that he doesn’t realize it sometimes. As dangerous as it is, Satoshi enjoys it for what it is—a brief glimpse of what it would be to be a normal teenager, something that Daisuke has managed to cling onto, kicking and screaming ever since Dark was drawn forth from his bones.

They reach the train station with their conversations going nowhere important at all—Daisuke chatters when he’s nervous, which is always, and today was no exception.

Daisuke fishes his student ID from his pocket as they reach the station and flashes it for the small scanner. As he waits for the turnstile to turn green, he does something complicated and quick with the pad underneath the scanner.

The light blinks rapidly as Daisuke breezes through. He turns with a sly grin as the gate stays open long enough for Satoshi to slip through.

His heart seizes in his throat. He tries to swallow past it, but it’s too large, too heavy for this frail, fragile life he has. Beneath his skin, the snake shifts, a monster too comfortable with his own body.

The thought strikes him like lightning:

Daisuke is so much like Dark now.

It terrifies Satoshi to no end. Dark steals what he likes from the Hikari—forever and always, until the curse reaches its end. Krad steals from the Hikari, too: his time, his magic, and one day, his life. But of the two, who is worse? Is it better to live a long life with no joy, or a short one filled to the brim? Between Dark and Krad, the answer will always be beyond him.

But Dark, Dark steals the things that Satoshi treasures most of all. The quietly meek boy who cried over a rejected love-letter, who never hesitated to help his classmates, the idealistic boy who fell as he was pulled into a world of plots and dark magic, who would invite people into his home and wanted a future beyond his family’s traditions. Dark has stolen it all away, shifting Daisuke into someone who has seen behind the patina of childhood, molded him into something keen and yearning.

And now, will Daisuke steal from Satoshi? Will there be anything left to steal, he wonders, when the warning in his heart finally comes to fruition?

(There’s a monster waiting, waiting for something to grow, to bud, so it can sink its teeth in. Once it’s done, will the mangled remains be worth theft?)

It’s soon. It’s soon, he can hear the wing beats, he can see the shadows growing. There, in the curve of Daisuke’s lips, the thief. It’s coming, and Satoshi isn’t ready.

“That was decidedly illegal, Niwa,” Satoshi says coolly as they step onto the platform, once again side-by-side.

“Yes, but you never take the train.”

Satoshi can’t deny the truth, so he simply waits for Daisuke to elaborate further. Daisuke rocks back onto his heels, looking up at the timetable.

“This train won’t be as crowded—if you stopped to get a pass, we’d miss it, and the next train typically doesn’t have seats. So it’s not really a break.”

“I see,” Satoshi says. He shifts his weight, watching as the train curls around the corner, changing the current of the air and people around them. “I wasn’t aware you take the train that much either.”

“Mom makes me memorize the schedules,” he supplies simply. “Just in case.”

There are a lot of _just in case’_ s between them: In case you get caught, in case you catch, in case you change, in case someone’s in danger.

“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” Satoshi asks mildly.

“No? Why?”

“If you were to…” Satoshi leads, eyebrow raised.

“Oh! Well, no,” Daisuke says slowly. He opens his mouth, then pauses and shrugs. “I wouldn’t—I mean, we… Ugh. You know.”

Satoshi laughs quietly. “Do I? Maybe you should elaborate.”

The way Daisuke’s brow furrows makes him laugh again, until he has to turn away.

“That was sort of mean,” Daisuke says. It doesn’t sound like he minds all that much; instead, he sounds like he finds it funny.

“Was it?” He turns back and meets Daisuke’s amused look.

Daisuke studies him for a moment, then turns his gaze away. “You could act like that at school and be even more popular, you know? It isn’t as if the others dislike you. You’re just a bit intimidating, is all.”

Satoshi feels himself grow cold, like the world around them has come screeching to a halt. “I don’t need them to like me,” he says. “I can do projects without them liking me.”

“I’m not just talking about this project,” Daisuke clarifies hastily. “I just… I was thinking about… It’s fun, walking home like this. And then about things to look forward to, and, uh…”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Satoshi says, hoping he sounds more composed than he is, that he doesn’t sound like his throat is closing up, that his chest aches, that inside of him, laughter stirs and curdles inside of him. He’s not up to this right now, not when not five minutes before, everything was _normal_ , even if a bit criminally inclined. “I’m not having this conversation with _you_.”

“I don’t want you to d—to go,” Daisuke says, stubbornly digging his heels into the conversation. The way he stumbles over the word _go_ is just another way of saying _die_.

Satoshi should never have said anything: He never should have even been in a place where he could even be comfortable confiding the sordid details of his part of the curse to his so-called sworn enemy. It’s a bone that Daisuke will never stop picking at, a conversation weeks in the making, and he doesn’t want to have it. Having it means he has to lose the last ill-fitting scraps of normalcy, having it means letting Daisuke down.

“Then don’t want it! Don’t think about it! Ignore it, like it’s not going to happen; don’t take me to your house where your father can stick his nose into it, don’t talk about having friends, don’t treat me like you c—”

The train’s arrival cuts him off, and he falls silent, mouth burning like he’d swallowed acid. He’s gotten too close to this, he’s gotten too close to the almost-life he could have, too close to the Niwas and even to _Dark_. He’s made connections between people like he’s going to _live_ , starting with Daisuke and spidering out to the others, to the Harada twins and Daisuke’s friends, even his family. Even _artwork_ , with the faint fondness he has for the Towa no Shirube and even Argentine.

He’s not supposed to care. He’s not supposed to notice what flavors of drink Risa Harada likes, not supposed to enjoy watching Takeshi pester Daisuke and Riku; he isn’t supposed to look forward to the cat-and-mouse game he has with Dark, or respect the thief’s intellect and knack for thinking one step ahead of the game. He’s not supposed to wonder about his ancestors, wonder what ending the curse would mean.

He’s not supposed to be here, with Daisuke Niwa, and see him as a friend. He was never supposed to get close enough to care about the other boy.

He’d made that bet with Dark intending to get close to Daisuke and then strike. He wasn’t supposed to feel bad for breaking it, or end up keeping it once it was broken atop that lighthouse.

Instead, Satoshi stands in shock as Daisuke turns and locks eyes with him as he walks backwards onto the train, hand outstretched.

“I can’t do that,” he says. “Because I care.”

It’s a thief's hand. He’s seen those deft fingers pick locks and pocket access cards and scale walls. It’s just Daisuke, but all Niwa men become thieves—it’s simply a question of what they steal: Hearts or artwork?

But it’s also Daisuke’s hand, the one that’s picked up brushes and pallets and carried him across town on his back, not knowing of the burdens he’d picked up that day.

Satoshi takes his hand and steps onto the train.

Daisuke beams at him, guileless and true and Satoshi has to laugh at himself.

The Niwa family steals from the Hikaris all the time. This is no different, not really.

And if he hands himself over, is it really being stolen? And if what’s stolen is the life—the fate—he’d been confined to? Would it truly be that bad, if _that_ was stolen from him?

The monster inside of him roars as Daisuke squeezes his hand once before letting go. Satoshi can’t bring himself to care that his decision to let himself be stolen, taken away from the death sentence and the curse and his smothering father— even for a night—enrages Krad.

It makes it seem like the right decision.

“It seems like the Niwas can’t help but give my family trouble, huh?”

Daisuke snorts and sits down. “Get used to it, mom’s going to be through the roof.”

“She was perfectly pleasant the last time,” Satoshi says, only slightly lying.

Daisuke laughs and shakes his head as Satoshi settles beside him, arms crossed over his schoolbag.

At this moment, they could be anyone at all.


End file.
